The first comprehensive biography of the former slave who became the inspiration for a literary icon

Mark Twain’s butler George Griffin has long been recognized as a model for Jim, the runaway slave in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Griffin’s years with Twain’s family in Hartford are well documented, but until now his earlier and later years have been terra incognita. Drawing upon newly discovered photographic evidence and documents, this first full biography of Griffin reconstructs his childhood as a slave in Maryland, his time as a Union general’s body servant during the Civil War, his postwar education as a servant, his 17 years working for Twain, and his final years, when he became acquainted with New York high society (including two presidents and a multimillionaire media magnate), started a family, and accumulated wealth as a private banker and gambler. Griffin’s story is a dramatic tale of triumphs and tragedies, and even contains some Zelig-like moments when he was an eye-witness to key Civil War battles (and may have even met Abraham Lincoln) and later lived next door to Harriet Beecher Stowe. Like Mark Twain, Griffin was a self-educated and self-made man whose remarkable story can now finally be told. It is a story that illuminates much of the Black experience in America.